Run Blog Contests – Have you been worrying why your blog is not still taking off even if you are working really hard?
Have you ever thought you can bring so much traffic, likes, links, comments, and subscribers just by running regular blog contests?
Yes, running blog contests is one of the best ways to take your blog to the next level.
If you are really serious about making money from your blogging efforts, you must invest the money first. After all, blogging is a business – not fun!
And the best way to invest some money on your blog development is to run blog contests – also known as giveaways.
There are many bloggers who took their blogs to another level by using the simple tactic called blog contests. If you are thinking to start a blog contest and not sure how to do it effectively – this article is for you!
Let’s jump into the details without any ado.
How to run awesome blog contests on your blogs?
Before you are thinking to run a blog contest, ask yourself these 3 questions.
- What is your primary goal? Ex: Do you want more comments, subscribers or likes on your FB page?
- What is your secondary goal? Ex: Do you want people to share your posts, buy your stuff or anything else?
- How much money you want to put in the basket? Pro tip: Don’t invest too much money in the beginning itself.
Start small
Start so small that even if you don’t meet your primary or secondary goals with your blog contests – you shouldn’t be worry about it. Most people invest a lot of money without thinking their primary objectives.
My tip is to start really small. You can start off by giving away something like
- Themes
- Plugins
- Cash prizes
- Tools
- Software
- Videos and anything that comes to your mind (but make sure your offer adds value to YOUR readers)
Make it clear to your participants and keep it simple
If you want to run a successful blog contest, you need to give some rules to your participants.
And make them as clear and simple as possible.
- What do they have to do to enter into your blog contests?
- Clearly mention how can they maximize their chances of winning your blog contents?
- Do they have to stay active daily or just once?
- How many days, weeks or months your blog contest runs? When can they expect the results?
Pro tip: You need to set a start and end date and make it clearly visible in your blogs.
To run blog contests, you need proper tools
My personal favorite tools to run blog contests are
- Raffle Copter and
- Punch Tab
They are REALLY awesome tools to run contests on your blog successfully and most of all they are FREE.
Approach sponsors and ask other bloggers to run blog contests jointly
Let me make it clear. No one will be interested in providing funds for running blog contests on your websites when you are new to blogging.
So you have to put some money at least in the beginning and until you gain some loyal readership around your blogs.
Then only you can consider asking others to sponsor contests on your blogs.
You can also ask your fellow bloggers (and return them favors by linking to their pages or blogs) to get some money to run blog contests on your blog successfully.
Write a blog post about your contest and make it go viral
This is a must. You need to shout out about your blog contests.
And use the post as a way to showcase your blog contest rules and regulations. Clearly mention what your objectives are.
Ask your participants to share the specific blog post in social media sites like Facebook, twitter, G+ etc. and provide they some rewards for doing so.
Also Read: Top 7 WordPress Plugins to Increase Your Blog Traffic
If possible try to promote your post and spend some money on referral traffic like Facebook ads or twitter sponsors to make your blog post go viral, this way you will be able to reach a wider audience.
The more the reach, the better the results.
Last but not least – tell them clearly how will you decide the WINNER
There are many ways to decide the final winner, either you can choose them randomly using randomizer.org or you can decide on their performance (the more likes they get the more the chances of winning the contest). The final choice is yours.